Metro reviews

Thursday, May 09, 2013 - Tempura seaweed brings lozenges of cured salmon together with a salad of sweet, dense cucumber and avocado cream with a breath of wasabi. Chicken salad, with cooking juices in the dressing and a scattering of cashews, is uncomplicated but likeable. And the buttery Madeira with cherries is a reward for any salad eater. The food is essentially room service in a good hotel, served hotter. It’s not quite enough to distract from the frocks.

Thursday, May 09, 2013 - There’s a well-travelled playfulness and pomposity-free creativity to the menu, which doesn’t make a meal out of making a meal of British ingredients – a welcome antidote to the current fashion for reheated French bourgeois classics and po-faced ‘local’ provenance. The edited highlights of three visits include a faultless wild boar ravioli ‘Bolognaise’ made with Berkswell cheese, peppered hearts and kidneys; a perfect piece of halibut with gremolata and roasted shellfish juices; and a fantastically fresh lemon curd pie.

Saturday, May 04, 2013 - A candle made from beef dripping pools into the holder; dense, dark sourdough for dipping; and a relish of finely cubed veal tongue, celery and jellied chicken consommé in a sharp-sweet dressing. Bloody lovely: earthy, piquant, meaty flavours and wobbly, crunchy, fatty textures, all in one mouthful...Sellers may be cocky enough to call his warm-up London and New York pop-ups "Foreword" and "Preface", but he can walk the walk: his food is genuinely directional.

Thursday, April 25, 2013 - Our saggy banquette is way too low for our table, the posh-farm-shop-on-a-budget feel of the place – open kitchen, multi-coloured wooden chairs and a display punting English wine – more Fulham than Farringdon. But the kitchen knows its business. Tender grilled asparagus comes on a mound of buttery champ, black pudding croquettes and salt cod fritters are both the right side of salty and crispy, while dauphinoise and chunky beef dripping chips (seven other sides are on offer) are both beyond reproach.

Thursday, April 18, 2013 - Char-blistered megrim sole appears as part of a springy assemblage of silky wild garlic leaves, leeks and new potatoes with mint. Beef cheek might be ubiquitous but it’s not tiresome topped with a cream of nostril-flaring horseradish and chopped pickles and served with crumbed marrow on the half-bone...Dinner at Claude’s Kitchen is neither faultless nor seamless, even taking Tuesday into account. But it has got interesting ideas, good ingredients and a happy buzz, and that’s worth something any day of the week.

Thursday, April 11, 2013 - A piece of sea bream is slightly overcooked but the braised Irish feather blade is fabulous and comes with a hunk of roast bone with a tiny spoon wobbling in the marrow. Like the beef, some traditionally simple dishes are left alone. Others, including a lovely goat’s milk rice pudding are needlessly over-poshed. The mixed messages are confusing: the day they pick one and stick to it will be a relief all round.

Thursday, April 04, 2013 - Mains of ox cheek, celeriac and horseradish, and the ‘house sausage’, a densely meaty pork number as it turned out, served – not as erroneously advertised with grilled ‘grillottes’ (cherries) but ‘grelots’ (similar to spring onions) and broad beans – are both solid but unremarkable. Most disappointing is a Hereford Hanger steak served under an unnecessary slop of sweet onions with an unattractively lengthy shaft of bone marrow...The service couldn’t have been sweeter but it could have been a lot sharper.

Thursday, March 28, 2013 - It feels odd to pick discontentedly through the rest of dinner when the chef is in and out of the dining room, hugging customers and posing for photos. But the rack of lamb is charred and oily, and the couscous it’s served with is overburdened with golden raisins. Canette à l’orange with endives is on the way to tough and, though the sauce is perfectly balanced, the endive has lost its natural, bitter glory.

Thursday, March 21, 2013 - A starter of beef with native oysters turns out to be four small, precise mounds of oyster-topped steak tartare. It’s as faultless as you’d expect for an eye-opening £29. Less toppy, and the best dish we try, are king prawns hidden under a hillock of flower-topped crispy rice noodles and served on a pleasing puddle of sweetcorn puree...This is complicated cooking that needs careful explaining, something the front of house, despite their sweetness, fail to do clearly. Any cleverness is being lost in translation, the food left to fend for itself and, on this evidence, failing to live up to expectations or its hefty price tag.

Thursday, March 14, 2013 - The first course proper is a combination of warm, soft perfumed fennel served with pungent dulse seaweed, crème fraîche and walnuts. That’s followed by poached leek, served up roots and all, cleft and filled with juicy mussels in a light lemon balm sauce...It’s early days but there’s a confidence to everything here – from a kitchen that’s delivering comfort via modern techniques as opposed to experimenting for the sake of it, to front-of-house staff who are warm, professional and care about what they are serving.

Thursday, March 14, 2013 - Leave your preconceptions at the door but take your wallet – the upselling is effective. Warm kurobata pork and pineapple rolls, fat and juicy, are better without their pineapple caviar topping but sushinho rolls, with salmon and cream cheese and crispy fried edges, have a likeable goo factor. We love folding butterfish tataki to trap a few crisp capers inside, and though the veg tempura isn’t bone-dry, battered sticks of queijo coalho, a halloumi-like cheese, work very well.

Thursday, March 07, 2013 - An overcooked schnitzel is tough and unidentifiable as veal; beef goulash tastes of little but stewed carrot; while the spaetzle and sauerkraut are undercooked and under-fermented, respectively. Worst of all is a sad, floppy and strangely sloppy apple strudel. If feeling like an extra from Made In Chelsea is your idea of a good night out, the cable-car DJ booth pumping out eighties ‘classics’ is, I’d imagine, the perfect place to get piste up. Just line your stomach somewhere else first.

Thursday, February 28, 2013 - Its design, which makes use of plywood tabletops and orange ceiling beams, is a successful exercise in fun and frugality. The daily changing menu – four starters, five mains and four puddings – is similarly stripped back...A starter of rare bavette comes on a bed of kimchi, while a pea and ham soup has generous chunks of the latter. Perfect pink lamb cutlets come with chickpeas, and a Caribbean-style stew of sweet potato, coconut, red pepper and squash has a chilli-kick to it.

Thursday, February 21, 2013 - With an air of supreme self-sacrifice, we try the lady-friendly tiddler, a 150g feather steak. Combined with sides of floury macaroni cheese and oversalted Parmesan truffle fries, it’s not as inadequate as we’d expected but it is overcooked. It goes back to the kitchen, while we share a bland 450g rib-eye...What with the DJ, the long walk to the hotel loos, the exuberantly sugary fairground-themed pudding (candy floss, popcorn, baggy doughnuts) and the rules, STK is exhausting.

Thursday, February 21, 2013 - Affordable lunchtime bento boxes are available but constructing a satisfactory meal from the à la carte menu at dinner is a pricey business...All of which is a shame as the kitchen is capable of accomplished creativity in dishes such as raw sweet shrimps topped with an earthy crumble of yuzu ‘koji’; quail kara-age; and pork belly buns that owe more to celebrated chef David Chang than they do to Japan.

Thursday, February 14, 2013 - The new menu incorporates stealth twists; that 28-day-aged Casterbridge onglet, not rested properly but packing good flavour, is topped with an intrusively hot, unadvertised harissa butter. Sadly, the nice man with the Caesar salad trolley has his dressing already made – worse, he wants to add roasted red pepper and chopped herring. A mushy treacle sponge is topped with crushed almond brittle, which is not the kind of surprise everyone would welcome. The old way wasn’t working but neither is the new. Someone needs to put a magic spell on it.

Thursday, February 07, 2013 - Our first hot dish is a snow crab nabe, a fantastically delicate consomme-like soup, the pieces of crab perfectly textured bursts of sweetness rubbing shoulders with tofu, yubu (tofu skin) glass noodles and enoki mushrooms. A precisely grilled piece of red mullet – not too crispy, not too oily – grabs our attention next...At £50 each, plus sake and service, for this perfectly paced, skilfully balanced meal, this represents exceptional value.

Thursday, January 31, 2013 - We taste a Nebraskan New York strip next to a dry-aged Danish long-bone rib-eye. There’s nothing wrong with the sweet corn-fed American but the herby Scandinavian brought me to the conclusion that, when it comes to quality beef, there’s nothing like a Dane. Sides of mash with onion and bacon, corn – with more bacon – and creamed spinach, don’t disappoint...London probably doesn’t need MASH but if quality steak is your thing, you do.

Thursday, January 24, 2013 - The interior makes use of timber panelling, oil-drum tops and antique posters decorating the walls, a corrugated tin roof over the bar and workshop-style floods fitted with jelly filters shedding a colourful light on proceedings. Twice-cooked BBQ wings are suitably sticky, served with their own rather mild jerk sauce, while ackee and salt fish bruschetta work well. Even better are mains of jerk chicken, expertly cooked, although I would have liked more heat from the seasoning, and there’s no faulting a rich oxtail stew with butter beans. A fine chocolate brownie is paired with well-made coconut ice cream.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - We smell the toastiness of properly crisped mackerel skin seconds before it arrives, dotted with bright-pink forced rhubarb and mini umbrellas of dark green watercress. A loose, airy horseradish cream is a bit too strong but the matched wine, a Sicilian Canapi, cleverly picks up and softens its prickly bits...There’s good-looking cheese from the deli as an extra course but we opt for pudding: a generous splodge of baked chocolate mousse served with blood oranges in syrup and a blood orange cream. Because we are sophisticates of the highest order, we both think of Terry’s Chocolate Orange. In a good way.

Thursday, January 17, 2013 - Given the setting, the menu from executive chef Andrew Turner, an itchy-footed veteran of luxury London hotels, would need to perform miracles to make Ten Room palatable...An under-seasoned tuna tartare, served on an aggressively sweet wafer-thin slice of pickled radish, comes with the unwelcome addition of deep-fried shallot rings. Another starter of barbecued quail gains nothing by being paired with pomegranate, orange and fennel.Of the main courses, a simple piece of Cornish skate with capers, lemon puree and a champagne sauce is the hard-to-fault highlight.

Thursday, January 10, 2013 - Everything sounds alluring and some of it really is. Chicken livers in a warm milk bun: yes. Oxtail stew with a buttery baked potato: you betcha. But when skill and timing really matter – getting some ooze going in a finger of taleggio and truffle toastie, for example – it’s not there. Much of what we try is oily, over-sweet or, in the case of tempura-style herbs with goat’s curd and honey, both...We brush ourselves down and tot up the hit rate. If this is the kitchen, we’re sticking with the shop.

Thursday, January 03, 2013 - Open from 9am to 11pm, in many ways it feels like The Wolseley goes to Bangkok. It is fantastically well designed – a beautiful, bustling dining hub built around a glass-fronted kitchen and bar...Chilled baby cucumbers come with a flaming coriander, basil and chilli dip, while jasmine tea smoked ribs are a reminder of the version that used to be found at Hakkasan. Naamyaa gai, the chicken and wild ginger version of the restaurant’s trademark dish, is a hearty pleasure: a soft block of kanom jin noodles, which you cut into quarters and mix with your pot of sauce, pickled morning glory, star fruit and a soft-boiled egg.

Thursday, December 20, 2012 - Owner Morfudd Richards ran the likeable Lola’s in Islington until 2006, when she moved into artisan ice cream.Here, she’s now offering a menu with a selection of small dishes which runs from midday and à la carte options during lunch and dinner hours. From the former: potted shrimps with brown toast, a plate of Ibérico Bellota ham and a plate of feta, walnuts and mint, do not disappoint. Mains: a breast of chicken with imam bayildi and Greek yoghurt, and a lentil and courgette kitchari, are both generous to a fault. Lemon curd ice cream shows Richards hasn’t lost her touch.

Thursday, December 06, 2012 - We begin the tussle with queso de chancho, crisp-crumbed head cheese fritters that have a ripe porky flavour and winningly stringy texture. On the same intense theme, grilled provoleta with almonds and honey is a mini frying pan full of farmyard; even when it cools to the texture of chewing gum, we can’t leave it alone...Flank steak with celeriac purée has, we’re told, been cooked sous-vide, and it shows in a lack of character. What we do love is the curious combo of flaky tuna mayonnaise with cubed potatoes and capers, topped with tender-crisp octopus.

Thursday, November 22, 2012 - A taut, perfectly seasoned, charcoal-grilled fillet of monkfish is a successful exercise in simplicity. The porterhouse is as good as that previously sampled at other branches; a fine cut of beef, its char perfectly judged. Caesar salad and Jansson’s temptation, a creamy Swedish potato gratin made with salted anchovies, doesn’t let the side(s) down but the roasted field mushrooms, although faultless, are a step too far. Leaving room for dessert here is never easy but whatever happens, at least try to order the salted caramel Rolos. They come served as a trio deliberately designed to test your love.

Thursday, November 15, 2012 - Warm, salt-baked beetroot works well with cool, creamy burrata, as does a faultless soft-shell crab tempura with a ginger and sweet chilli dressing. Sika venison done three ways – seared, braised and made into a sausage roll – comes with an excellent root vegetable rosti...An unnecessary gooseberry sorbet, would have benefited from being heated before being served. Like much else here – service, interior, ho-hum wine list – it’s perfectly pleasant but lacks necessary warmth.

Thursday, November 08, 2012 - Roasted hake with salt cod bon bon, caper and brown butter chicken jus appears perfectly cooked but, this time, a tad over-seasoned. No such fault with a generous helping of moist, pink Iberico pork tenderloin with chargrilled baby leeks and baked black figs...Allen’s cooking deserves the attention and, given more time to settle into his smart, new London home, it should only get better.

Thursday, November 01, 2012 - They’ve had a lark making over what was The Ark, a Kensington fixture since the 1960s, with tractor-seat bar stools, a pitchfork strapped to the ceiling, tabletops fastened to oil drums and waitresses with suede tool belts. If The Wurzels opened a wine bar, it would probably look something like this...Overdone lamb and date-stuffed vine leaves disappoint, as does a bland autumn vegetable hotpot. The rabbit ragu comes with undercooked spätzle-like twists and jarring pickled pearl onions, while perfect slices of pheasant are let down by watery lentils.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - A whole dressed Devon cock crab, its brown meat superbly sweet despite a generous squirt of lemon juice, was faultless, while the Scottish sea trout served with samphire and more of those palourde clams made the most of a fish that I usually find hard to get excited about. Chunky beef dripping chips with thyme salt had the right mix of crunch and fluff...The likeable, young front-of-house crew, kitted out in mismatched nautical stripes that stopped them looking like they were on loan from Pizza Express, enjoyed their work and made it look easy.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - The Blue Pig is fine for a drink and a platter. The dinner interest is in the brief £20 ‘333’ menu, which offers a trio of choices for each course and changes weekly. Keeping to this brief without boring the fork out of the brigade or the punters is a great discipline for any chef. The Blue Pig’s efforts lack rigour. Flavours are good but execution is haphazard; wild boar has a lovely prune and Armagnac reduction but the chop is tough, with pale, flooby fat, and it sits on a grainy parsnip and apple puree.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - Rita’s menu, consisting of cultured takes on lowbrow US staples, could be called bourgeois redneck. It’s Stateside short order cooking delivered by nice English boys and girls. Their patty melt, a loose burger topped with cheese and onion marmalade, arrived on grilled (in the US sense of the word, ie fried) rye bread. The soy and ginger hot wings got messy, as any good wings should; the Mexican-style grilled corn coated in mayonnaise, cheese and red chilli powder – ditto...Although the local hipsters would probably like to keep Rita’s to themselves, there’s really no reason to let them.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - There’s a bit of international folderol, including chicken wings with Middle Eastern spicing and cumin aioli, but the majority of dishes feel either English or American. A salt beef sandwich on toasted Peckham Rye bread (rightly given a gong by the Real Bread Campaign last week) lacks fat and juice but makes up for it in sauerkraut and melty Emmental...Free cake and the kindness of bartenders is enough to make anyone happy but that’s not the only reason Camp And Furnace gave us a warm glow. It’s the right kind of new life for this old place: clever, well designed and – fingers crossed – future-proof. If they want to use daft plates, that’s fine with me.

Wednesday, October 03, 2012 - When the manager later asks if I enjoyed my steak, I couldn’t tell a lie. She kindly takes it off the bill. The one star here is for her and the front-of-house team, who are charming, friendly and efficient. Why anyone would drop £50 here on three courses and a couple of glasses of wine, when there are branches of steak restaurants Gaucho and Hawksmoor nearby, is a baffling mystery.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - Downstairs, there's a communal table, beer books, knackered sofas, flowers and pig-based art. A shuffleboard table occupies customers while they wait for their selections...We had fine, light, billowy tapenade and robust chicken liver pate (made by 'two blokes from North Leeds', apparently) with toast trickled with olive oil and fiery Harrogate chilli jelly with Wookey Hole cheddar. Mayfield, a rich Emmental-style cheese, was a great discovery and finocchiona, sliced paper thin, was the pick of the meat. Friends Of Ham is, indeed, a friend of ham. Not to mention cheese, booze and the railway traveller.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - Starters of beetroot, walnut and gorgonzola salad and seared scallops with saffron-yellow aioli were both pared back and beautifully balanced. Under the meat, a chutney sweet with caramelised onions and a brilliant Puy lentil salad in a zingy emulsion of oil, shallots and lemon waited to offer the illusion of health. Then came a ‘plaisir de chocolat’ with a big-bubbled chocolate mousse, a brownie so soft in the middle we could scoop it with a finger and white chocolate ice cream on a honeycomb turret. Of course, it’s not perfect. The lovely room, with its stained glass frontage, feels crammed and service missed the odd beat. But it’s really very pleasing.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - Of the two meat options, the thinner, firmer beef came out as top dog over the pork. You can have them naked, or topped with anything from salsa, avocado, sour cream and pickled jalapenos (the José), to the more straightforward pleasures of grilled sauerkraut (the New Yorker). They go more off piste, too, but only just: if you like kimchi that takes your head off, you’ll be disappointed with the K-Dawg, topped with Korean fermented cabbage and red bean paste. The spicing is again mild on the Sloppy Joe, their take on a chilli cheese dog.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - With mackerel three ways (smoked, tartare and fried in a white bread jacket), little teardrops of pomelo and a clear marmalade of golden lime started a sour citrus party at which the fish was not just unwelcome but bludgeoned at the door. Veal carpaccio had a grainy texture, feeling like the surface of a tongue, though liberal garnishes of air-dried tuna and pecorino-style Spenwood cheese, along with frisée in abundance, made a nice little salad regardless. Crab fritters with wasabi mayo were the simplest things we tried all night but also the clunkiest...Our lonely dinner demonstrated how hard it is to get punters into a restaurant they can't see, no matter how good the views are.

Thursday, August 09, 2012 - On the Northern Quarter site of defunct fish restaurant Sole, it’s buzzy and chaotic, with mucky glassware everywhere. Given that the staff are sweet but clueless, we’re surprised and delighted to be served in a timely fashion. Pulled pork is served at the bottom of a sundae glass, topped with twin peaks of mash and a dill pickle flourish. Between the sauce and the potato, the meat can’t get out and sing. Salt cod balls with salsa verde mayo are better, if still sadly encumbered by potato, while rooster scratchings – made with chicken skin – are an ambitiously mighty £2.90.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - The refurbished restaurant, now called The Garden by Simon Radley, is resolutely girly, with olive trees and tealights and even a modest white picket fence. The actual garden is an ingeniously well-covered outdoor dining room...Radley writes the menu alongside head chef Steven Tuke. Dishes such as tuna carpaccio with crispy squid, Jerez pickles and radishes sound good and look pretty but clumsiness encroaches more often than not. The tuna is damp and woolly, while the salt cod pâté and garlic butter served with fat, caramelised scallops is clodhoppingly rich and hard work. My friend murmurs 'Moro' when she sees the grilled poussin with pomegranate and preserved lemons; it might not be a crime to be inspired by great dishes but this version is a study in bland.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - They make everything, apart from the bread, in-house, but some dishes don't feel like it; a lamb shank is shrouded in a gloopy sauce and a standard creme brulee comes in one of those little pots that supermarkets sell puddings in. The promised home-made biscotti don't appear alongside, and a chocolate ganache tart with a tooth-bothering hazelnut base comes with cream rather than the advertised vanilla cream cheese. By this stage we're past caring and we can only assume that, despite its good intentions, the kitchen is too.

Wednesday, July 04, 2012 - Burgers come as singles or doubles in the right kind of soft, golden buns. The single beefburger is big, crumbly and overcooked, sprawling flatly out of the bun, light on flavour and the essential wrist-tickling trickle of juice (it's mainly fat, calorie fans). The bacon cheeseburger is helped by its toppings but we know that at heart, it's not right. Onion rings are shrouded in a dark-brown crust, thick with dried herbs, and a peanut butter milkshake tastes fleetingly of butterscotch. Cajun fries have been dumped on by the god of seasoning powder and not shaken afterwards; the regular skin-on ones are limp.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - Basement pizza parlour Leonis has long been owned by Chileans. Now they've renamed it Santiago and created a red, blue and still joyfully naff Chilean restaurant, with a menu boasting sopaipilla, ceviche, humita and calzone (some customers are still in it for the pizzas). The first is leaves of thin, deep-fried pumpkin dough, with tomato salsa and avocado dips that taste bought-in. Empanadas are good: puffed and crisp, with a slightly spicy seafood filling...Desserts, wobbly flan-style custard and dulce de leche cake, are both lost under clouds of squirty cream and chocolate sauce. In this, as in so much else, Santiago retains the spirit of Leonis - probably what's holding it back.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011 - The approach is not fetishistic; US barbecue purists would no doubt find holes big enough to drive a hog through. The baby back ribs are more wet than sticky, the corn a little deflated, the salad bar sad. But a beef rib burger, filled with chunky meat pulled from the bones and hidden under blue cheese dressing, works a treat. Fries are seasoned with an addictive spiced salt and ice-cold Coke floats, served in a metal goblet with long spoons, provide a devastating sugar hit.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009 - A little tower of lobster mousse was the epitome of good old-fashioned fancy French cookery, the sort you don't need teeth to eat. It was delicate and creamy but with a good whack of shellfish flavour boosted by a spoonful or two of lobster bisque and a chunk of lobster claw meat. Coquilles Saint Jacques Parisienne was just as old-school, with the scallops served classically in the shell with a mushroom and white wine cream sauce and pomme puree...Lutyens probably won't change your life - the Conran formula has become too familiar for that - but it might just make your day.

Friday, July 31, 2009 - The menus come stuck to the back of laminated record sleeves, a device once used to sheath vinyl discs, themselves a more chunky forerunner of the MP3 file...Elvis bodyswerves the restaurant trade's current pash for tapas-sized portions in favour of hearty servings of upmarket pub grub...it is seasonal, prepped on the premises, sustainable and free-range rather than frozen, imported, bought cheaply, boiled in the bag and marked up. It's what pub grub should be but seldom is.

Thursday, July 23, 2009 - Chef Stefan Nilsson offers a range of easy-going, uncomplicated dishes with contemporary flair and proper respect for ingredients and flavours...Four fat slices of moist pork loin came in a delicious gravy that had plenty of oomph, and were balanced by a lovely sweet/savoury/salty combination of peas, mushrooms, braised lettuce and smoked bacon. My friend's plaice fillets with sweet potato puree and cockles had some great flavours going on, but needed tweaking...The New Conway is doing all the right things with friendly staff, an unpretentious atmosphere and a menu that goes far beyond average pub grub.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009 - From the open kitchen, wonderful smells wafted from the charcoal oven and grill on which the mains are cooked. The menu is about as candid as it gets: swordfish, monkfish, sea bass, it reads, with a choice of sauce, garlic butter or seafood mayonnaise. A signature main dish of shellfish roasted with garlic and parsley – half a lobster, one scallop roasted in its shell, a handful of mussels, clams and sizeable shrimps – was brilliantly varied and superbly fresh, but small for the money. Roasted skate fell off the bone, beautifully drowning in black butter and given a kick with capers; it was utterly divine.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - Its 'traffic light' system of tableside carving, whereby you flip a token from green to red whenever your meat intake levels start nudging critical, is of limited value in practise…The lamb was the major hit: full-flavoured and nicely juicy, but seared to a delicately herbed crisp at the edges. Beef skirt was a surprise show-stopper, benefiting from a gentler cooking process that softened this tasty but often gristly cut. Pork shoulder was similarly successful, the only real misfire being a beef rib

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - I stopped in one morning and discovered that the new landlord is Nick Armitage, owner of The Picturehouse just down the road and The Kingsdown Vaults in Cotham. He has clear ambitions for The King's Arms: to turn it back into a pub with bags of character, a serious wine list and a menu that makes folk more than happy to trudge up Blackboy Hill…The food we ate and the wine we drank, without wanting to gush, were nothing short of fantastic. In head chef Todd Francis, Armitage has clearly found a man he can trust with his reputation.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009 - The Tiffin Rooms is rather different. It is the latest venture from Balbir Sumal, the restaurateur sometimes referred to as the godfather of the Glasgow curry scene and the man who originally founded the Ashoka chain...The cavernous interior won't win any prizes for charm but with this food at these prices, who cares? Different enough from the time-worn canon of curry favourites to be intriguing, this is fresh and fun Indian food delivered with a final bill that will encourage repeat visits. It's another Balbir beezer.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - Only open a couple of weeks but already mobbed to the rafters on a Wednesday night, the Crabshakk delivers decent seafood in a buzzy setting at affordable prices… We got under way with three of the best crabcakes I've seen. Made almost entirely from white crab meat, they were splendidly light, crisped top and bottom but bursting with salty crab flavour. My seafood chowder was well judged: not too creamy, studded with clams, mussels, slivers of spoots (razor clam) and crunchy with finely chopped veg.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - In Glasgow, Ketchup is a bright new burger bar that is doing a good job of polishing the reputation of the hamburger. It's a G1 operation in the former Cul De Sac premises on Ashton Lane and it's pretty impressive. The place creates a happy impression before you even get through the door. Boxes of vibrantly coloured tomatoes, peppers and chillies sit on the porch and sell customers the idea that the food inside is fresh rather than frozen.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - It's been a juddery start for The Vaults. When Metro reviewed it shortly after its launch, we were irritated by its slap-dash attitude, the chef's 'supplier problems' and an ineptly cooked side order of vegetables. But that was nine months ago and, after a period of uncertainty, we noticed with interest the arrival of a new head chef. Sean Kyle was on Raymond Blanc's team at Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons, and also at Bank, so we thought he might know a thing or two about cooking vegetables. His new menu is upmarket brasserie fare; ambitious but not scarily pretentious.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - These days, wherever there is Jamie Oliver, there is hype. Queues around the block, despite drizzling rain, to get into his new restaurant in Bath last week seemed the least of it. Unless you're a party of eight or more, Jamie's Italian doesn't take bookings but if you've ever tried to get a table at Fifteen in Cornwall and been asked which year that's for, you'll agree that's a bit of a godsend.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - You can really feel the love that's gone into The Promised Land. With a name like that, what else would you expect? Opened by Nick Davidson and Alan Savory in the spot that Benedicto's Italian restaurant used to occupy, this new Cardiff bar has got a vibe that you can't help but warm to.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - Toast is a new bar and restaurant that's situated beneath a block of flats in the financial district of Leeds. Other than its proximity to offices and flats, there's nothing particularly appealing about its location. Quite the opposite, in fact, as it's also slap bang on the site of the ill-fated Lumiere skyscrapers, and as we approached Toast, we were confronted by the wall of imposing bollards that encases the abandoned construction area.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - If only the economy was as sturdy as Chez Jules. Whether the country is basking in the sunshine of a financial boom or staring into the chasm of recession, this French bistro has appeared to be bustling with happy diners ever since it opened in 1995.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - Tierra Brindisa is not an operation ever likely to be caught on the hop. Within a couple of weeks of opening, it's already running like clockwork, bursting at the seams with Soho's early adopters – diners rhubarbing away about green-lighting and optioning and other self-important whatnot.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - There are no prizes for guessing the type of food they serve at Al Dente on Edinburgh's Easter Road. What is more surprising is that Al Dente is there at all. The site used to be occupied by Giancarlo Tinelli's restaurant and Tinelli's had been there forever. The tiny trattoria had been around so long it seemed to be a permanent part of the fabric of the city – like the Scott Monument or the castle or congestion…

Tuesday, September 09, 2008 - The bar and restaurant both look striking, although the latter has so many mirrors that all but the most vain of diners might want to tart themselves up before making a booking. Situated on the first floor, it has tall wrap-around windows that look out to the Castle and along Princes Street. Slightly separated from the rest of the dining room by organza curtains, there are three eye-catching booths for large groups, but the real centrepiece of the room is the glass sculpture that hangs from the restaurant ceiling and down through an oval cut in the floor into the bar below.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008 - Mark Hix is a man with many stellar connections; as the dude behind the Caprice Holdings kitchens (The Ivy, Scott's, J Sheekey and, of course, Le Caprice) he's hobbed and nobbed with le tout London. Surely this can't be why he's received little but slavering reviews since opening this, his first self-owned restaurant?